Kerrie's Reading Notes #4

During my undergraduate years, I always disliked group projects. At the time, I felt they were unfair and that I did not learn from them. The readings this week really made me second guess my opinion of group projects. Now that I am working in my field, I realize as Lang states, “Very few careers will allow an individual to avoid working in collaboration with others” (Pg. 106). Lang also gives convincing support that students learn more and are more satisfied with their courses when they are required to work collaboratively with classmates. The readings gave excellent ideas on how to make group work beneficial in the classroom.

One topic both Lang and Davis discussed is how to pick groups. This is a topic I would like to discuss more in class. What is the best way to pick groups? Lang uses different methods depending on what type of group it is. He states, “I tend to use either random or heterogeneous groupings for informal learning groups and homogeneous ones for formal learning groups” (Pg.120). I understand his reasoning behind this but am curious to see what others think or have used themselves.

Another topic that I would like to discuss further in class is grading of group projects. Davis gives suggestions for grading group projects such as assigning both individual and group grades or the same grade for each member in the group. She suggests if you assign the same grade for each group member that the grade should not account for more than a small portion of the total grade for the class (Pg.201). I agree with Davis on this because students are not in full control of a group grade so it should not cause a huge change in their overall grade. I think if you want students to put more effort into group projects the grade may need to account for more of the final grade in the course. With this being said, I feel giving both an individual and group grade for group projects is the best tactic. I would like to discuss what others have done and which methods have worked best for them in class.

Davis discussed academic service learning in Chapter 26. While reading about academic service learning, I had a few questions which I would like to debate in class. If you require academic service learning outside of class, should you have less in-class time during the week? I am also curious of different academic service learning opportunities for different fields. It would be interesting to see if there are opportunities are out there that could possibly work for more than one field of study.